David Hockney Celia with Green Hat from the celebrated Moving Focus series, exemplifies the artist’s sustained investigation into portraiture, perception, and the expressive potential of color lithography during the 1980s.

Depicting fashion designer Celia Birtwell—one of Hockney’s most significant and recurring sitters—the work balances psychological intimacy with formal experimentation, using flattened planes of color, shifting viewpoints, and subtle spatial tension to challenge traditional portrait conventions. The Moving Focus series as a whole reflects Hockney’s desire to capture how vision unfolds over time rather than from a single, fixed perspective, aligning the prints with his broader theoretical engagement with seeing and representation. The importance of Celia with Green Hat is underscored by its institutional recognition: an example of this work is held by Tate in its collection, reinforcing the print’s scholarly, curatorial, and art-historical standing. As such, the work is widely regarded not only as a refined portrait of a key figure in Hockney’s life, but also as a museum-validated example of late-20th-century British printmaking at its highest level.

David Hockney Celia with Green Hat, from Moving Focus, 1984 is a lithograph in colours, on HMP handmade paper  hand-signed by David Hockney (Bradford 1937-) in pencil in the lower right and numbered from the edition of 98 in pencil in the lower left.

David Hockney’s Moving Focus series, created between 1984 and 1986, is one of the most ambitious print projects of his career. Moving beyond traditional fixed perspective, Hockney used shifting viewpoints, fragmented forms, expressive drawing, and vivid color to explore how people experience subjects over time. Featuring portraits, interiors, still lifes, chairs, and views of the Hotel Romano Angeles in Mexico, the series was produced with Kenneth Tyler using innovative combinations of lithography, etching, screenprinting, collage, and handmade papers. Together, the works represent a major achievement in modern printmaking and a powerful exploration of movement, perspective, and memory.

The works in David Hockney’s Moving Focus Series (1984–1986) include: Conversation in the Studio, Tyler Dinning Room, Pembroke Studio Interior, Pembroke Studio with Blue Chairs and Lamp, Two Pembroke Studio Chairs, The Perspective Lesson, Amaryllis in Vase, Red Celia, Celia in Green Hat, Hotel Acatlan: First Day, Hotel Acatlan: Second Day, Hotel Acatlan: Two Weeks Later, Views of Hotel Well I, Views of Hotel Well II, Views of Hotel Well III, Walking Past Two Chairs, An Image of Gregory, An Image of Celia, An Image of Celia, State I, An Image of Celia, State II, An Image of Celia Study, Portrait of Mother I, Portrait of Mother II, Portrait of Mother III, An Image of Ken, White Porcelain, A Picture of Two Chairs, Number One Chair.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:

David Hockney Celia in Green Hat, from Moving Focus, 1984 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalogue raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoices that will accompany the sale of the work).

1. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany this artwork.

About the Framing:

Framed to museum-grade, conservation standards, David Hockney Celia in Green Hat, from Moving Focus, 1984 is presented in a complementary moulding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical grade Plexiglas.